A Week on CalFresh: Hunger Hurts

When I was a kid, my family just scraping by, food stamps help stock our then-meager kitchen in Chicago. When I was starting out as a journalist, I lived on $10 a week in New York and used food stamps because I didn’t have enough money to eat. Now, and still, I make so little money as a journalist, I’m eligible for California’s version of food stamps, CalFresh.

As a reporter who’s now covering food in the Mission, I wanted to write about the experience of using public assistance as a barrier against hunger.

The typical CalFresh allowance, I found, barely serves as a barrier: $6.45 a day is the amount of money most households will receive in October if they qualify for nutrition assistance. “Nutrition assistance” is a fancy way of saying CalFresh will help you a little each month, but it’s likely you won’t be given enough CalFresh dollars to eat really well. TO READ MORE CLICK HERE